12 Project Management & Resource Scheduling Tools

You’re probably asking – do we really need project management tools or resourcing and scheduling tools? The answer is probably no, and yes. No, you probably don’t need it – you could get away with not having it. But yes, if you had the best project management tools, you could probably run your PM team and deploy your resources more effectively and efficiently. As agencies and studios grow, the systems and processes that worked for a small agency often struggle to scale. Excel and Google Docs are great, but the best project management tools and resource scheduling tools out there that can help you work even smarter.

Working smarter with project management tools and resource scheduling tools

Project management tools can help plan, organise, and manage projects as well as your agency resources – whether they’re people, rooms, or phonelines. Project management tools can be used to develop resource plans and create resource requirement forecasts. Depending the sophistication of the software, they can also include tools for estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, and documentation storage.

The challenge with these tools is that there’s often a lot of overlap. Resource management, time tracking, project communication, expenses, storage, Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Services Resource Planning Software (SRP) can all find themselves bundled together – this can be good, but if you need to integrate with or replace legacy systems, things can start getting complicated.

Personally, my preference is for tools that do one thing really well rather than a catch-all tool which does lots of things, but none of them are quite right. Below are some great options for project management tools and resource scheduling tools.

12 great options for project management tools for studios and agencies

Resource Guru is a dedicated resource management tool. With a great visual calendar style interface, it shows what everyone’s working on and clearly displays availability so you can maximise utilisation. The tool allows Project Managers to make bookings simultaneously with no chance of stepping on each other’s toes. Clashes are automatically prevented. Bookings can be added to a waiting list and used for capacity planning later. Each staff member gets their own resource dashboard so they can log in and know exactly what they should be working on. And to monitor business performance, powerful reports monitor utilization of your team and help with capacity planning. Resource Guru costs from $2.50/user/month.

Hub Planner is a sweet looking resource planning and management tool for PM’s to plan, schedule, track and book their teams of resources. The tool focusses around a high-level view of resources, their capacity and utilisation, and also gives PM’s the power to deep dive into projects to at a glance establish progress, billability and profitability. Within the tool are some powerful tools and features for resource scheduling and planning – with drag and drop and filtering, timesheets – to analyse schedule vs actuals, and reporting – with smart report templates and custom reporting capability. Helpfully, it also has an API so you can plug it into your other systems too. Hub Planner costs from $69/10 users/month.

Float is a powerful, but simple, resource management and scheduling application used by agencies and brands including NASA, Google, and RGA. It’s a great tool to use alongside other project management tools, when you’ve already planned your projects and need to schedule a team to do the work. Float allows you to easily manage your staff’s workload and upcoming projects from a single place. Workers are updated with their weekly schedule via email and with live notifications so that everyone’s always up-to-date. They don’t need their own login information, which keeps the system simple. There’s also a reporting component so that you can monitor your team’s utilization at any time – report on scheduled hours by individual team member, department, client and project. Float have been evolving their product and so using their API and Zapier you can connect with 100’s of your favorite apps including Basecamp, Asana and Trello. Float costs from $29/10 users/month.

If you’re looking for an enterprise level and fully tailored project management toolkit solution, check out Clarizen – a complete professional services automation (PSA) platform with a great set of tools for managing projects, tasks, resources, and budgets – wrapped in a single product. Clarizen brings together project management, configurable workflow automation, in-context collaboration and a tailored, role-based experience that simplifies work, reduces communication overload, and provides visibility so everyone can work more effectively and adapt to changes. It centralizes release plans, release backlog data, bugs, documents, communications and more into one system, helping you to deliver releases efficiently, track and prioritize incoming tickets and schedule them for iterations with stacks of handy built-in reporting. Clarizen costs from $30/user/month.

Admation has been designed specifically for advertising and marketing teams to streamline the process of delivering of high volume creative campaigns. It includes tools for briefing, workflow, mark-up and approvals to simplify the madness of delivering large-scale campaigns and comes with integrated asset management for Ad Storage and an Asset Library so all your collateral can be stored in one place. With the resource and project management module, you can create project timelines and templates, manage project teams and track projects online. The resource management module allows you to track utilization and capacity along with timesheets and schedule and brief your resources. Admation costs from $25 USD /user/month.

Harvest is built around a robust time tracking tool. Harvest allows staff to track time and send invoices from an integrated application. Staff are able to start and stop timers to allow accurate reporting and submit time sheets. The Harvest system then generates visual reports allow you to analyze time and see the distribution of your staff resources at a glance, helping you to keep your projects on budget and estimate for future projects accurately. Harvest also allows you to invoice accurately using the time sheet tracking data. The system provides an integrated invoicing component which generates and tracks invoices and retainers through to payment. Harvest costs from $10-12 /user/month.

Teamwork Project Manager is a Basecamp alternative – an online teamwork & project management application to assist managers, staff and clients in working together more productively. Teamwork has components to enable Project Management collaboration, task management, milestone tracking, messaging, file management and time tracking. In short, this is one of the many young upstarts trying to offer a Basecamp alternative. A unique feature of Teamwork PM is The Risk Register where you can post risks and assign it a priority – a great tool for transparency among the team and with clients. Teamwork Project Manager costs from $49 /35 projects/month.

Projectplace is a powerful project management, and collaboration tool. More than just another Basecamp alternative – Projectplace has a slew of additional features including issue management, project templates, online meetings, meeting and resource management and organisational reports and analytics. The resource management features in Projectplace give users overview of all scheduled resources in all projects, show the availability and capacity, allow searching and booking of resource, perform scenario planning of resources, identify possible “show stoppers” due to overbooked resources and prioritise resources between projects. Projectplace costs from $29/user/month.

Basecamp is an excellent project management tool that focusses on making collaboration easy. It’s really simply to use and for many years it was the de facto choice of agencies. Basecamp helps you manage multiple projects at a time with to-do lists, file sharing, chatting, messages, calendars and time tracking. As it’s so established there are now many different possible integrations and ways to extend the base product including time tracking, invoicing, accounting, reporting, planning (including Roadmap), file synchronization, bug & issue tracking, source control, creative approval and lots more. Read about them here: http://basecamp.com/extras. There is a trimmed-down free version, which is great for starting out. Basecamp costs from $20/10 projects/month.

10,000ft is a tool designed give you a big picture (hence the 10,ooo ft) of your business, teams and projects. Armed with this information you’re then able to make better strategic decisions based on this real time, complex data. The tool is based around a dashboard which gives an overview of project, schedule and analytics. The project element gives top level project information across different types, clients, and states. The schedule element provides an interface for scheduling resource – you can spot who is available; schedule upcoming projects; and set up how long they will last. The Analytics component gives a great overview of forecast and actual project hours and estimating accuracy. They have a great overview of the product on their site here: http://www.10000ft.com/guide.html. 10,000 ft costs from $49/10 users/month.

Roadmap is a project portfolio and resource forecasting tool which plays nicely with Basecamp. At a top level there is project portfolio planning and analytics allowing you to view all projects to see project stats. The resource planning component allows cross-portfolio and individual resource forecasting. The cross-portfolio forecasting allows you to view all resources in traditional calendar view and high information density grid view, filter by specific resources or roles and a team calendar gives you the ability to block-off company-wide events or holidays, and individual resource holidays. The individual resource forecasting allows you to view all work items assigned to a specific resource, by calendar view or filtered by specific projects. Roadmap product costs from $15/25 projects/month.

Traffic Live is an online studio management software with an elegant interface, and some pretty amazing scheduling functionality. The system automatically knows the right person for a job, based on their availability and client suitability. It allows you to split tasks and defer until later, or just drag it onto someone else – drag, drop, split, reallocate and park work as you need to balance day-to-day demands and changing priorities. Traffic Live’s point of difference is that it’s built on an open system which plays nicely with lots of other systems including Jira, Maconomy, Outlook and Mailchimp. The Traffic Live product costs from $29 /user/month.

Other project management tools and solutions:

Below is a list of additional project management tools and resource scheduling solutions:

What do you think?

What do you think we’re missing? What else is there to project management and resourcing scheduling tools and software? We’d love to hear if you’ve got any suggestions, tips or thoughts on using this kind of software – why not share them using the comments below?

About Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and VP of Client Services at FCV, a full service digital agency in Vancouver, Canada. I've been in the industry for more than 10 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from video virals to CMS’, flash games to banner ads and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony.

89 Comments

May I recommend StrikeBase ( http://www.strikebase.com )
It has —
* a Work Board for Tasks with Time Tracking
* Chat on the Web and Desktop
* File Sharing,File versioning
* Dropbox and Google Drive integration
* A Calendar with Google Calendar integration
…and lots more!

Thank you Ben for this resource, you have pointed out some new software that I’ve never heard about! In my company we are using Teamwork right now(not Teamwork pm :-)) and it is a really good software for scheduling resources. At first we also thought that a software for managing our resources’ time was not necessary but since we started using it we immediately encountered its benefitl! We are now more conscious about which of our resources is overloaded and so we can manage the situation in time and all the team is happier 🙂
If you want to take a look at Teamwork here is the site http://www.twproject.com/

I already tried lot of PMS, but after your suggestion I gave Teamwork a try.
Now we are completely addicted!
We started with a very light approach, inserting only the root of each project and using issues for day-bay-day management (we found the issue planner quite comfortable).
Now we structure complex projects using Teamwork Gantt editor and even dependencies, but only when really necessary (some of our customers love to ask us a printed Gantt 🙂 )
As you said, having a clear situation of work progress, project costs and work load makes our team happier 🙂

We also just moved over from using spreadsheets for our resource planning to using Hub Planner. I am greatly impressed with the software so far, pretty easy to get up and running with nice visuals and scheduling tools. Saying that, we were stuck in the gloomy world of Excel spreadsheet planning for quite some time, so anything that beats that on a Monday morning is fantastic IMO 🙂

In the same vein as OpenAir, I would like to mention Resource Planning by Retain International (http://www.retaininternational.com). They’re UK-based and have been around for 20 years serving among others the big four audit/accounting firms. Not strictly PM software but resource planning and scheduling for staff and/or physical assets; well worth a look.

thank you for your list. I highly recommed open source project management software Easy Redmine. I am using it for 1 year and it is really awsome. It has many extensions so it adapts to every kind of project, it is cheap and nice.http://www.easyredmine/

Hi Ben, I came across your article, and was wondering if you’ve seen our project management app? It’s called Trigger (www.triggerapp.com), and it helps you manage tasks, projects, and log time.

It’s doing really well with creative agencies, and it constantly being updated.
I used it personally myself before joining the team. I found it so easy to use, it looks damn nice, and is simple alternative! 🙂

Project managers love this unique task board optimized for teams. Matthew Osborne created this project management system because my clients demanded it. He has developed a search function that worked effectively. online project management software.

Newcomer, Allocate (www.allocatehq.com), is worth checking out too. It’s a very simple resource management tool that helps you quickly see your team’s availability. Set up and scheduling is super fast, and it’s still in beta so it’s currently free for all team sizes.

Also take a look at http://www.proofhub.com, It is simple and easy to use effective project management software that enables precise tracking, adequate highlighting and timely conduction of events and milestones. Timely email notifications are sent to team members, clients, customers and other stakeholders so they can mandatorily and timely participate in events, meetings without forgetting them.

We use qdPM Extended. It is a web based open source solution. One of its best features is that it has a built in ticketing system to allow customers to communicate with you to request quotes and changes, report issues, given feedback in UAT and so on. Tickets can spawns as many tasks as you want so its all connected.

Compared to other paid solutions like Basecamp and Confluence+Jira, qdPM Extended is a bargain. There is also a free version qdPM.net

Hi Ben,
Thank you for the list of Project Management tools you have mentioned. I would like to add one more i.e. eResource Scheduler. eRS is a collaborative multiuser project resource scheduling software which provides effective project management with enormous features like drag and drop scheduling, configurable reports, export to excel etc.

Another tool that you might want to add to the list is PIVOT. The FLOW module handles agency project management from sales to planning to invoicing and accepting payments. It is a digital suite that also allows agencies to integrates websites, promo & email campaigns, social media, analytics and more. Check it out at:

Thought you might want to add JobSuite to your mix. It is created specifically for creative project tracking. Fully web-based and built on the Salesforce.com platform. Many base features but can still be customized. Flexible scheduling, collaboration, calendars, vendor quotes, estimates, purchase orders, as well as a reports for all areas. Check it out at…

Think I saw it mentioned further up this list but thought I would include it myself anyway…

I use WorkBook.net as my ONLY system for all areas of my agency. WorkBook is a fantastic integrated solution that covers CRM, Project Management, Resource Management + Accounting meaning that all info me and my team require is in 1 system.

I would encourage all you advertising, PR, design etc. agency owners out there to take a look http://WorkBook.net

Hi, Check another service http://www.oogwave.com, we built for SMBs. Simple to use, easy to adopt. For ideas, files and task collaboration. Available to discuss more anytime. rana.porter@oogwave.com (solution specialist, Oogwave)

I just shopped for a project management tool for my team, I almost bought Asana and then I met the Streamframe team at SxSW. The project management space is so fragmented. Even with the most modern tools we still ended up relying on email and spreadsheets as a “catch all.” Particularly worrying to us was how financial and efficiency tracking seemed to be completely ignored when managing projects. Even in Beta, Streamframe solves all these problems. Their feedback is quick and they have already started working some of my companies suggestions into their road map. Here is the URL: check it out http://www.streamframe.com

We recently dialed up the efforts to transform the way we manage convergent client campaigns and needed a software solution to not only create detailed campaign plans but also centralise multiple stakeholders in a collaborative environment to share ideas, work, and files. As we are no small agency we wanted to keep the training costs at a low level while focusing on an immediate, big impact. The tool we finally landed on (after reviewing pretty much every tool in the list above) is http://www.smartsheet.com

Hi Timo,
I’m interested in SmartSheet. Just started playing in the trial version. Is there any sort of resourcing element, so potentially looking at several jobs’ schedules and consolidating a resource report, say where Shari is utilized across 8 projects, determining her bandwidth? Thank you.

For project management you can also give Brightpod ( http://brightpod.com ) a try. A simple app with bunch of collaboration features for marketing teams. Helps you get the bigger picture when you are working on so many different things.

Hi Ben, what a great article with so many different types of project management tools! We’d also love to recommend Trello (https://trello.com) for to-do lists, Slack (https://slack.com) for team discussions, and our very own Concept.vu (http://www.concept.vu) for getting work signed off by clients 🙂

Hi Ben,
I can highly recommending adding admation – http://www.admation.com to this list. Admation ‘s point of difference is that it is fully integrated with online approval workflow and marketing asset management, providing agencies and marketing teams with one central online location to manage their creative projects, plan and track resources, as well as manage the approval and storing of artwork and assets. Its is feature rich and user friendly. Please let me know if you are interested in a demonstration. Cheers,

Our team is using http://hitask.com – We can share task lists make managing team projects simple. As a team member I can create and assign tasks. We can leave comments for each other on tasks to keep track of progress and ask questions. Shared tasks are visible to assigned team members. You can be automatically notified when someone completes a task or makes a change. Aside from that it is very easy to navigate the entire page.

Hi Ben,
I strongly suggest you add this to your list — MSP_LEVELING. This tool can be found at the website: ara-project.com
It works on Microsoft Project (MSP) applications.
This tool provides automatic leveling of resources.
Also provided: schedule quality inspection and various analysis reports which capture key information that the PM can use to review with management for approvals.

Check out Dryrun (http://dryrun.com). It’s a great tool for managing your business cash flow, building budgets, and comparing scenarios. Dryrun gives you the ability to make great business decisions quickly and easily without the need for complicated formulas and spreadsheets!

[…] a review! As I started, this is a big deal, such a big deal in fact, that my article evaluating 12 Project Management Software & Resource Scheduling Tools actually generates more than half the traffic to this site. We are about this topic passionately, […]

I’d suggest to check out PM solution for agencies and studios by Comindware – http://www.comindware.com/solutions/marketing-project-management/ I like it for its automated priority-based planning, automated plan updates according to real-time project status, easy workload control and (my favorite!) advanced collaboration options including online discussion rooms. You have to buy license for key project members and can invite unlimited number of collaborators which can take part in discussions and see tasks assigned to them, but not project in general.

I would also like to mention WorkZone (www.workzone.com). Originally built with agencies in mind, it remains one of the longest running web-based project management and resource allocation tools on the market. Tracking projects becomes less stressful because everyone on your team has access to the current status of all projects and tasks. WorkZone also gives you a view on who is busy, allowing a manager to gauge workloads easily.

If you manage people as much or more as you do projects, if you need something more flexible then standard project tools, something that will cover 80% of what crosses your desk, and you’re a manager or VP or C-level officer, and you wouldn’t describe yourself as a project manager per se, then you fit what we do, and we use ManagePro (http://www.managepro.com). It’s the project management tool that’s designed for people who aren’t. A lot of hp to handle everything from tracking what you’ve delegated to dashboards, and allows you to drag and drop Outlook emails into the project plans as well.

Forecast.it is a full end-to-end data-driven Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) platform that is easy-to-use right in your browser. The solution predicts time and cost for your projects intelligently and lets you organize and run all your agile or traditional projects. With our easy-to-use interface you get the full portfolio and resource overview of all your projects in one solution.

Forecast.it is for startups and enterprises who wish to get predictability into their budgets and projects. It is for companies who want the full portfolio and resource overview and organizations that want to get their distributed teams of any size more organized and productive.

for project and project portfolio resourcing I’d like to mention Silverbucket as well. It’s an option worth checking out if you are looking for a visual, simple solution for resourcing. There’s also a time tracking feature included.

I would like to recommend workasteam. It provides a simple excel like interface for creating gantt charts which are updated in real time when team updates their work status. It also provides charts such a S-Curve, Effort utlization vs work % complete and Effort distribution among other things, giving you deeper insights into your project status.http://www.workasteam.com

If you are in the film/TV industry and looking for resource scheduling, project and task management software, you should try FoxOMS. Its worth a look especially if you like working with a timeline interface. https://www.foxoms.com

I run a creative agency and my team and I are currently using Briefcase – By far the best solution I’ve found for job management, scheduling, time tracking, reporting, invoices, quotes and estimates, everything we need in one place and more! A beautifully designed interface, it’s intuitive, logical and clear! Would highly recommend giving them a go – http://getbriefcase.net/

Hi Ben,
The list would not be complete without eSilentPARTNER (www.eSilentPartner.com). It’s fully integrated web-based project management and accounting software for ad agencies and professional services firms. They just released some slick project management features including Kanban boards and the system is HTML 5 compliant. The accounting is also strong with multi-company and multi-currency capabilities. It can also handle VAT tax for our Canadian friends:)
Definitely worth a look! http://www.esilentpartner.com/index.html

I created this software — Colarosa.com — I advertise it as a system capable of “enabling increased efficiency with streamlined project dashboards, scheduling, file sharing and more.” It’s best feature is it’s ability to get internal and external stakeholders all on the same page.

Another great system in this area is Data Valley http://www.datavalley.co.uk, this is a modular based system which integrates into Production Jobs for project management, Media for managing Media schedules, Timesheets for logging internal or chargeable time and also has its own Accounts module as well as being able to export to other finance software such as Sage. Latest version for Production is all web based also.

I just found you listing and wanted to add our product to that list. There are lots of products on the market, we believe that our system AccountAbility, http://www.accountabilityaccess.com, is one that more than merits this list. AccountAbility is an integrated project management, media and financial system built in the cloud and designed exclusively for today’s communication agency.
We built it from the ground up so everything you see is in the system, no bolted on components, no emulation to access the system.
Our clients highlight low cost, ease of use, and all agency integration as reasons, amongst others, why they work with AccountAbility. We are in 25+ nations, multi language, multi currency, with consolidated accounting across offices. We welcome comments and if more interest please contact me.
Best,
Chris Brownc.brown@accountabilityaccess.com

Agreed with your initial line about ‘my preference is for tools that do one thing really well rather than a catch-all tool which does lots of things, but none of them quite right’. I feel like resource scheduling tools always get grouped into other software offerings, (especially in PM tools) even though resource management should really be treated as a separate but integrated function.

Saviom Resource Management Software (www.saviom.com/resource-management-software.aspx) are one of the few tools on the market that provide a full Enterprise Resource Scheduling solution. You should definetely check it out!

All. The company I am with is using Basecamp and Harvest but I really am looking for something a bit more.

Backstory: we work with a team of contractors that all have different levels of tasks they can do. Some are available at different times, some only can do specific tasks, and some only have a specific amount of hours they can work. I am looking for something to input their information in and to click a type of filter that lets me know who is available in the afternoon and can review a site on Firefox (for example). I don’t want anything overly complicated. If it can be integrated with BC and Harvest, that would be great but not necessary.

Have you considered admation. It does allow you to do the things you are after. You can schedule who is available when at an individual level, including late starts, early finishes and non-working days. You can also assign functions to your resources which helps you with the specific tasks issue. For more info visit http://www.admation.com

If you want a SaaS for managing employees’ schedules, I recommend QuickTask.com’s Schedule, https://quicktask.com/schedule/ , software. For those that need a SaaS for customers to be able to take appointments, QuickTask.com offers its’ Rendez-Vous, https://quicktask.com/rendez-vous/ , software. Schedule and Rendez-Vous are both easy and fun to use.

Great read thanks for sharing! These tools are a great help especially for freelancers online businesses. Time tracking tools are also important as it helps you and your employees keep track of your time and productivity. By using web-based time tracking tool from sites like https://www.clockspot.com/ you can micro manage your projects and be more effective with completing your tasks.

I am working in a digital agency who are currently scheduling with spreadsheets (ahhhhhhh) I know!
I am looking to introduce a tool for resource scheduling and project management – I just dont know what ones to trial out

Hi,
Can I also recommend reviewing admation
Admation offers both approval workflow, project management and resource management features. It comes with integrate image library and final assets library, basically meaning you can use one solution to manage your projects from beginning to end. You can find more information at http://www.admation.com
Good luck with your search.

Could someone give me some advice.
I hire out teams of 2 specialists to different customers. I whish that the specialists can list available time and I want the customer to see when the resource is available ( full team of 2 specialists) and be able to make a reservation. I will then confirm it and bill accordingly.
Does anyone know of a system that handle this. I don`t want my customer to see who the specialist is, just availability….

[…] with a handful of resources and so there’s no urgent need for resource management, or specialist project management tools. Usually, everyone simply gets together for a quick huddle and works out what everyone is going to […]

I would prefer one of the Best Resource Scheduling Software which I think you missed to mention here. eResource Scheduler is really a wonderful software for any company who is looking for resource management. Find more about it here- https://www.eresourcescheduler.com